But when I try to print it out, approximately top half of the image is cut off and it runs off the top of the page.

How do I move the image down so that the top of the image is at the top of the page, but below the page number at the top of the page (where the text usually starts if you begin to type in a new page)?

Welcome to TeX.sx! Please add a minimal working example (MWE) that illustrates your problem. It is considered a lot better to put in some code that will compile, as it makes it a lot easier for us to copy it into our text editors and work with it, as well as to see exactly what it is you are trying to do.
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Andrew UzzellNov 23 '12 at 14:34

1 Answer
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LaTeX by default reserves the right amount of space for any image (unless you tell it otherwise) so what you describe should normally not happen. However, to be able to do this, the graphic format need to be able to hold information about the graphic dimensions in a why that LaTeX can reserve this space (some graphical formats don't do this, though for png it should work).

That leaves on other area of issues: the program that generated the graphic may have written inforrect information into the graphic. Then of course you see the behavior that the graphic overprints or falls out of the page.

The the frame should show you what LaTeX thinks the size of the graphic is and if that doesn't fit reality, you either have to regenerate your graphic or you need to use the optional keys to \includegrahics that explicitly set the bounding box information manually, i.e., you have to tell LaTeX what the size is in reality.

In case the size is wrong use can you can't regenerate the graphic image, then use the bb= key as follows:

if your image is 5x8 cm. The first two values describe the lower left corner ofthe bounding box (which is normally the point 0/0) and the other two the upper right corner. If the zize information is really strange you may also have to adjust the first two values. Read the documentation on the graphicx package or any good book on LaTeX (like ours :-)

I tried the frame command, and it shows a rather a small square on the lower left part of the image (the image is still cut off at the top). Does this mean that LaTeX thinks my image is a small image the size of the square that it created? How can I regenerate my image correctly? I just pasted the image in Microsoft Paint, and saved it as a .png (to avoid losing quality with .jpg).
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BBBNov 23 '12 at 15:12

paint is one of those programs which simply do not get it right, so this is precisely your problem. the small square is what paint has put into the graphic as its "size". So either you find some other method to generate the graphic (or some tool to convert it from png to png but fixing the size) or you have to specify the bounding box in points with the optional argument bb=a b c d where a and b specify the left lower corner (probably 0mm 0mm) and and c and d the top right.
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Frank MittelbachNov 23 '12 at 16:08